Next morning Marinette run out the house with excitement she couldn't hide. Yesterday had been full of positive experiences, so she couldn't wait the next trip.
"Good morning, M'Lady!" Adrien greeted her.
"Good morning, Kitty!" she smiled in reply. "Did you sleep well after our walk?"
"Perfectly! I oxygenated, so I slept like a baby. And you? Didn't a summer breeze affect you?"
"Geez, what the hell that small talk means?" groaned Nino who got out the car. "Just dance a minuet to kill me faster."
"It's quite possible we'll dance a minuet." Adrien laughed.
"Really?" Marinette asked in surprise.
"I'm taking you to Versailles."
"What an idea!" she snorted. "There will be crowds in the palace!"
"We're going to the gardens. No chance to find us in such an area. We could even get lost in one of mazes and make plans."
"Yeah, I know exactly what you would like to do in mazes…" Nino muttered, and Marinette laughed although she knew that pretending of not hearing that would be more reasonable.
"We have two days left." Adrien continued undiscouraged. "We have figured out the beginning of our relationship, now we have to learn as much as possible about each other."
"And you're boring again…" Nino commented. "It's good that at least your girlfriend has a sense of humour, because there's no fun with you…"
Marinette giggled. She had already got used to Nino's taunts, especially after his yesterday contribution to the process of preparing 'their story'. He was very helpful when Adrien or she had started to indulge in creating more and more incredible circumstances of their fake first meeting. Marinette liked how they had been working in the d'Auvers park on the counterfeit past. In result they had quite a possible story of meeting of two celebrities in a café. She felt a hint of jealousy that it hadn't happened for real. Somewhere deep in her heart she wished to meet Adrien that way…
"Just imagine Alya Césaire's face when she gets known that you run into me by accident in a café and didn't recognise a popular model in me!" Adrien had laughed, when they were going back to Paris yesterday.
"She'll roll her eyes and won't believe in that. She got used to that I'm lying to her."
"I'll convince her."
"Yeah, right… She'll look at you with her X-ray eyes and she'll ask suspiciously: 'And you just fell in love at the first sight?'" Marinette tried to imitate the journalist's voice and look. Nino chuckled amused by the girl, although he kept his attention to the road.
"Of course, not!" Adrien joined the game. "I assumed that it's just another fangirl! But Marinette didn't behave like a fangirl. Rather like someone who didn't recognise me at all."
"Damn, you're good…" the girl muttered. "I'd buy it."
"See? The plan is perfect!" he smiled satisfied. "Leave it up to me and we'll be good."
Yes, she really wanted to believe him.
They kept laughing and joking all the way back home. They had had great time for the whole day and they made significant progress in the preparations. If they managed to work on details today, only trivia would be left for the third day. Marinette still felt terrified when she was thinking about the set-up planned by Plagg, yet she began to believe that with Adrien by her side everything would go smoothly.
"Versailles, folks!" Nino informed suddenly.
"Already?" Marinette was surprised.
Was it possible that she had been silent for the whole drive here? How could she miss the opportunity to learn something new about her boyfriend? Instead she was staring out of the window and thinking about yesterday, not paying attention to the fact that Adrien was holding her hand for the entire way and stroking her palm with his thumb.
"Let's go dancing the minuet, M'Lady." He smiled letting her hand go.
"Yeah… Minuet…" she muttered, feeling her cheeks burning.
Damn it. Damn, damn, damn… It wasn't good. It wasn't good at all! The more, Nino noticed her flush. That made her even more embarrassed.
She knew she had to regain her composure as soon as possible. First, she needed to drown out those strange emotions awakened by Adrien's warm smile. That was a complete nonsense! She'd known him for two days! She knew nothing about him. That was illogical, irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable!
"So, what's the plan?" she asked when they got out the car.
"Gardens, My Lady. To avoid crowds of tourists."
"They will be in the gardens too."
"I hope they'll be more interested in nature than in the other walkers. Besides, I must admit that today you look totally unlike LadyBug again."
"Yeah, I'm unrecognisable in this hat…" she muttered ironically.
"No, it's not that…" he shook his head and came closer to her. Then he reached to her hair and touched it softly. "Maybe it's because of hair down…" he whispered rather to himself than to her.
For a moment Marinette forgot how to breathe. Did he do it on purpose? Like yesterday with breaking a touch barrier? Or like today with stroking her palm for the whole drive to Versailles? She had no idea what the answer was. And she wasn't sure she could ask him about it.
"I explained that yesterday that my everyday look differs from my professional one." she said finally, when she remembered how to speak. "It's quite useful, especially on days like this."
"I wish I could do the same."
"You didn't have Tikki. She would take care of organising you some privacy. I'm so grateful that she thought about it in good time. I wouldn't even think that I'd need it in the future."
"That's why some people are singers and some other are their managers. You don't have to think about everything."
Suddenly, Nino appeared from nowhere and patted his friend in the back. Then he put a black cap on Adrien's head.
"Don't thank me, dude!" he muttered by the way and then he withdrew to a standard distance.
Marinette glanced at Adrien's cap and burst out laughing. Nino probably had bought it in one of souvenir shops, because for sure it was one of Versailles gadgets. Where else could he buy a cap with inscription saying "Sun King"?
"What's on it?" Adrien was intrigued, so he ripped the cap off and glared at his friend. "Very funny, really!"
"Bu-But…" Marinette was laughing. "It is…"
"What's so funny?" he glanced uncertain at her.
Marinette calmed down immediately. She cleared her throat and explained:
"When I saw you for the first time, you were standing at the window and the sun was shining in your hair. You looked like your head was in the sun. And now you're wearing a cap with inscription 'Sun King'. Please, don't tell it's not funny for you."
Adrien smiled in reply. For a moment he'd thought she was making fun of him. Meanwhile it was an inside joke thing.
"Does it mean I've been promoted from a prince to a king?" he asked.
"You were a frog in between, remember!" she gave him a wink.
"Only if you kiss me, remember…" he smiled meaningfully, and she blushed again.
"Beware, frog!" she answered back, then turned her back and ran away in a direction of the gardens.
He laughed, put his new cap on his head and followed her. He found her quickly in the entrance to a maze, where she was standing and laughing so hard that she was bent in half. He had to wait for a moment until she calmed down enough to explain what was so funny for her.
"Well… You know what Nino said this morning about what you wanted to do in the maze…" she said finally. "But this maze is a fake. Look, you can't even hide or get lost there. You can see the other end through!"
"Maybe it's more complicated somewhere inside?"
"Do you want to lose your shadower?" she asked in whisper.
"He'd break my both legs when he finds me… I'm not taking that risk. Besides, we should work first before we start having fun."
"Nino was right. You're a terrible bore." She joked. "But… I have an idea how to combine fun and work."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll learn something about me, and we'll visit the maze."
"I'm in." he nodded.
She took his hand, as if it was something quite natural for her now, and she led him to the maze. Nino followed them, but he wasn't too enthusiastic about this trip. Too many shadows, corners, risks. Damn celebrities with their whims… In such moments he liked his job much less…
